Boca Raton, FL – Today, over 100 people from across the country joined a protest outside the GEO Group’s annual shareholder meeting at the Boca Resort and Club. GEO, a private company, bills itself as the “largest provider of correctional services in the world.” Groups participating in the protest included the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC) from Lake Worth, Florida and the Austin, Texas-based Grassroots Leadership.

HRDC associate director Alex Friedmann, an activist shareholder who owns a small number of shares of GEO Group stock, attended the meeting. When he asked about recent reports of hunger strikes by immigrant women held at the GEO Group-operated Karnes County Family Detention Center in Texas, he was informed by GEO Senior Vice President John J. Bulfin that there was no hunger strike; rather, he said it was a “boycott of dining facilities” at the detention facility.

GEO Group founder and CEO George C. Zoley further remarked that the women detained at Karnes awaiting asylum hearings “have a higher standard of living” than they had elsewhere, implying that they should be grateful for being incarcerated – along with their children – at the company’s for-profit detention center.

Grassroots Leadership has been organizing support for the immigrant families held at Karnes, as well as families incarcerated at another detention facility in Dilly, Texas operated by GEO Group competitor Corrections Corporation of America.

Members of the Dream Defenders from Broward County are chained together like prisoners as they join with more than 100 protesters from across the country at the annual shareholders meeting of the GEO Group, the nation’s second-largest private prison firm, at the Boca Resort and Club, on Wednesday, April 29, 2015. The Human Rights Defense Center, Palm Beach County Environmental Coalition, Florida Immigrant Coalition, Service Employees International Union and other Dream Defenders from across the state also protested. The world headquarters of GEO Group is in Boca Raton. CEO George Zoley is a graduate of Florida Atlantic University, which became embroiled in controversy after the for-profit prison group offered $6 million for naming rights for its football stadium in 2013, an offer later withdrawn.

“We know that GEO Group and other private prison companies thrive when they are able to obscure the truth about their business practices and what happens inside of their facilities,” said Kymberlie Quong Charles, Grassroots Leadership’s Director of Criminal Justice Programs. “We are here in solidarity with local South Florida communities to shine a light on the ugly reality of privatized incarceration and detention, and this particular company’s attitudes toward those they keep behind their bars. Our message to GEO’s shareholders is that no one should profit from incarceration.”

Also in attendance at the GEO Group protest were members of Florida Immigrant Coalition, students from Dream Defenders groups on campuses across Florida, Enlace International, and members from SEIU-Florida and the Palm Beach Environmental Coalition.

The protest included a street theatre performance by Dream Defenders members titled “GEO-o-poly,” based on the Monopoly board game, that depicted the connections between slavery and for-profit incarceration. Photos of the protest are posted here.

According to Friedmann, during the GEO Group shareholder meeting the company lauded its performance over the past year, including “no major disturbances or operational problems” at its correctional and detention facilities. Further, GEO stated one of the company’s goals for 2015 was “organic growth” with new and existing clients. GEO currently receives 42% of its revenue from contracts with federal agencies, including the Bureau of Prisons and the Department of Homeland Security/Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Although GEO executives repeatedly cited efforts to increase rehabilitative programming in the company’s facilities, and an interest in becoming a “leader in offender rehabilitation,” in December 2014 GEO Group successfully objected to a shareholder resolution, submitted by HRDC associate director Alex Friedmann, that would have required the company to spend just 5% of its net income on programs and services designed to reduce recidivism rates for offenders in the company’s correctional facilities.

“At Grassroots Leadership, we believe no one should profit from the imprisonment of human beings,” said Kymberlie Quong Charles. “We live in the most incarcerated society in the history of the world. Every day we confront a prison industry that preys on pain because our addiction to locking people up dehumanizes all of us.”